The Big Bite - By Charles Williams Page 0,2

off his hat and dropped it on the carpet, and fished a pack of cigarettes from the side pocket of his coat. I tossed the robe over the bed and when I turned he was watching me. I walked over to the dresser beyond the foot of the bed and picked up my own cigarettes. As I lit one and dropped the match in a tray I caught sight of him again, in the mirror, and he was still staring at me. It was obvious and deliberate, and he didn’t seem to care at all. I felt like a girl on a runway, and began to get hacked.

He blew out smoke and leaned back in the chair. “Stacked,” he said. “Walk back here again.”

“You that way?” I said. “Beat it.”

He shook his head indifferently. “I’m not trying to make you. Just want to see how you walk.”

“Why?” I asked.

“It’s professional.”

I came back and sat down on the bed with the cigarette. He watched me utterly without expression, and then he shook his head again. “You’re a screwed duck.”

“That’s news?” I asked.

“No jury in the world would give you a nickel, even if you hadn’t already signed a waiver. Take a look at yourself. You got any idea how far you’d get trying to look smashed-up and pathetic to twelve average Joes with pots and fallen arches? They’d laugh like it was the Berle show.”

“You just came over to cheer me up, is that it?” I said. “I know all that. And I have signed the release, or waiver, or whatever you call it—”

“What did they give you?”

“Five thousand,” I said. “And the hospital bills.”

“You took the short end, pal.”

“In another year or two I might have figured that out myself. Look. The leg had healed perfectly. I was up and walking. Not even a limp. The medics said it was as good as ever—”

“And when you reported for practice, it wasn’t? You’d slowed down?”

“It’s not measurable,” I said. “The only way you can tell it is by trying to run through eleven pros who haven’t slowed down. You can figure it out then while they’re walking around on your face five yards back of where you should have been. It’s nothing you could prove to anybody. X-rays wouldn’t show it.”

He nodded, and moved his hands. “Motion is a thousand signals, and a thousand movements, linked. One square corner anywhere, and you break it up and the flow is gone. You’re not a professional athlete any more; you’re just another taxpayer with two arms and legs. There’s no shortage.”

“So why keep kicking it around?” I asked. “The whole thing was settled months ago.” Then I thought of something. “What’s the name of your outfit again?”

“Old Colony Life.”

“Hell, that wasn’t the company—”

“No. Of course not. I thought you understood that. We didn’t have anything to do with the liability he carried on the car. That was some California company.”

“Then what’s the angle? How’d you get in the act?”

“Life insurance. About a hundred thousand worth.”

I stared at him, puzzled. “I don’t get it.”

He sighed. “Cannon was insured with Old Colony—”

“I read you,” I said. “That far. But what about it? He was insured. He’s dead. You pick up the tab. Looks cut and dried to me. I figure he cost me fifty to seventy-five thousand, depending on when and if I might have got hurt in the natural course of events, playing. And now he’s cost you a hundred grand. That’s a pretty good night’s work for one souse, but I don’t see what either of us can do about it now unless maybe we send out for a box of Kleenex and have a good cry.”

“I’d just like to ask you a few questions. If you don’t mind.”

I shrugged. “Go ahead. But I don’t see how there can be much room for doubt he’s dead. He was buried while I was there in the hospital.”

“I know. Just say we’re still a little curious as to how he died.”

I stared at him. “Don’t you read the papers?”

“Only the funnies. And today’s horoscope.”

“Everybody knows how he died. He was killed in the wreck when he sideswiped me and knocked me off the road.”

“Sure. I know. I read the Highway Patrol report. I talked to the officers. I talked to the doctor. I talked to the other witnesses that were there when they untangled him from the wreck. I talked to you in the hospital. Now I’m talking to you again. It’s a living.”

“You don’t